- Can't the bishops in the Eastern Orthodox church also trace their ministries back to the apostles via apostolic succession?
- Don't Lutherans also have bishops?
- , yep, but the usage "Catholic" to mean "World Wide" as opposed to "Roman Catholic" covers them, too (we have remarkably few Orthodox-oriented articles so far).
- , yep to that, too, but they do not, with the exception of the Swedish Lutheran Church, I think, have apostolic succession. In the 17th century particularly many more protestantly inclined Anglican and Lutheran bishops refused to be ordained using the correct form (they used invalid liturgies), and in some cases were not ordained by bishops. Thus their lines are 'interrupted.' The problem of Anglican orders is much more than just 'transubstantiation' - there are a lot of problematic ordinations in there, and back in the heyday of the Anglo-Catholic movement there was a lot of research done to figure out if anyone could say generally if apostolic succession had been preserved. This discontinuity between Lutherans and Anglicans is one serious roadblock to their moves toward cooperation.
- - the Methodists have bishops, too, but have never pretended to apostolic succession. --MichaelTinkler
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